Colin Hanks couldn’t have asked for a more dramatic change of pace from his
“The Good Guys” comedy than what he’s got with his current assignment — he plays a hair-raisingly creepy religious fanatic who has a weird relationship with fellow zealot Edward James Olmos in the new season of “Dexter,” which premieres Oct. 2.

“I can’t give much away. Now it’s official that I’m the bad guy, so that’s good. That’s really about the extent of what I can say. We’re still shooting, and I’m afraid if I blab now there’s still time for them to write something really horrible for me to do,” he jokes.

Promos of the sixth season of the Michael C. Hall series suggest the Bible-quoting pair are doing very bad things in the name of the almighty — a violently forced “repentance,” for instance. The season also has Dexter exploring spiritual matters himself, thanks to his encounters with an ex-con named Brother Sam, played by Mos Def.

“I have no idea if it will be controversial or not,” says Hanks.

He does know the show couldn’t have come along at a better time for him –now that he and wife Samantha have baby daughter Olivia at home.

“She’s 7 months old. It’s been great for us to be able to be here together and
for me to stay here. I haven’t worked from home in quite some time, since before I moved to New York for three years,” says the actor, who is also the eldest son of Tom Hanks. Colin, who won the Theater World Award in 2009 for his work in “33 Variations,” also has the big-screen “Guilt Trip” with Barbra Streisand, Seth Rogen, Adam Scott and Yvonne Strahovski on the way.

“I’ve been running around like a headless chicken the last four years, sort of
wrapped up in the circus, as I like to call it,” he says. “I spent all of 2010
in Dallas.”

He’s become used to acting jobs that have him as “a straight man in a comedy. That’s where my bread has been buttered the last couple of gigs. l love that, love to do comedy. I never would have actively tried to do something as vastly different as this show, because then what happens is, the industry says, ‘No, you’re wrong. You’re wrong for this and you need to be doing that other thing.'”

In fact, when his agent brought up the idea of “Dexter,” Colin says, “I said,
‘Yeah, sure’ — sarcastically, thinking, ‘That will never happen.'”

It’s not the first time he’s played a man of religion, as fans of “Mad Men”
will remember his Father Gill character. “I sort of feel like there’s a
connection there between Father Gill and this character, Travis, but that’s
really it,” Colin says. “Father Gill is a very, very good man. Travis is the
oppsite of that.”